got from a fleeting flirtation with disloyalty in West Belfast. They
were greeted at Larne by a large crowd vociferously cheering Carson, and
singing the National Anthem. A still larger concourse of people, though
it could not be more hostile, awaited Mr. Churchill at the Midland
Station in Belfast and along the route to the Grand Central Hotel. When
he started from the hotel early in the afternoon for the football field
the crowd in Royal Avenue was densely packed and actively demonstrating
its unfavourable opinion of the distinguished visitor; on whom, however,
none desired or attempted to inflict any physical injury, although the
involuntary swaying of so great a mass of men was in danger for a
moment of overturning the motor-car in which he and his wife were
seated.

The way to the meeting took the Minister from the Unionist to the
Nationalist district and afforded him a practical demonstration of the
gulf between the "two nations" which he and his colleagues were bent
upon treating as one. The moment he crossed the boundary, the booing and
groaning of one area was succeeded by enthusiastic cheers in the other;
grotesque effigies of Redmond and of himself in one street were replaced
by equally unflattering effigies of Londonderry and Carson in the next;
in Royal Avenue both men and women looked like tearing him in pieces, in
Falls Road they thronged so close to shake his hand that "Mr. Hamar
Greenwood found it necessary" (so the _Times_ Correspondent reported)
"to stand on the footboard outside the car and relieve the pressure."

It was expected that Mr. Churchill would return to his hotel after the
meeting, and there had been no shrinkage in the crowd in the interval,
nor any change in its sentiments. The police decided that it would be
wiser for him to depart by another route. He was therefore taken by back
streets to the Midland terminus, and without waiting for the ordinary